


you need to play your part

by anthrop



Series: Good Intentions Deadfic Extravaganza [1]
Category: Danny Phantom
Genre: Gen, Isolation, Manipulation, what if i had too many thoughts about the danny clone back in 2014, what if that
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-23
Updated: 2020-10-23
Packaged: 2021-03-08 17:36:20
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,187
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27170503
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/anthrop/pseuds/anthrop
Summary: Months in isolation, suspended animation, your body nourished by a feeding tube and a saline drip, electricity humming through your ectoplasm so that your human half’s muscles won’t atrophy.
Series: Good Intentions Deadfic Extravaganza [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1983268
Comments: 10
Kudos: 57
Collections: Good Intentions: Abandoned and Unfinished WIPs





	you need to play your part

**Author's Note:**

> And lo! Deadfic for the Good Intentions WIP Fest. Here's a bit of an idea I had in 2014 (probably for a Phandom event?) about the Prime Danny Clone that unfortunately never went anywhere. I still like this bit a lot however, so enjoy. Fair warning, minimal editing was done pre-posting, so who knows the state of this.
> 
> Title comes from Nine Inch Nails' ["Copy of A."](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4frJxfrj_88)

You’ve been suspended in this narrow stasis tube for months, breathing in the same chemical tang, barely capable of focusing your attention on anything happening beyond the three-inch Plexiglass panel because the supercomputer you’re wired up to has been streaming information directly into your brain. Months forcibly spent absorbing human history, the advances of modern science; all of it in no less than four languages. Months in isolation, suspended animation, your body nourished by a feeding tube and a saline drip, electricity humming through your ectoplasm so that your human half’s muscles won’t atrophy. When— _if_ —you’re ever unplugged, pulled out of this awful tube, you will be indistinguishable from any average teenager. 

When you’re _human_ , that is. But you’ve never _been_ human before. You’ve never been stable enough to even risk the transformation. At least, that’s what you’ve heard the Maddie program say, a constant buzz in the back of your mind. 

_prime clone stabilization at 17%_

_prime clone stabilization at 29%_

_prime clone stabilization at 43%_

_prime clone stabilization at 55%_

_prime clone stabilization at 70%_

_prime clone stabilization at 73%_

_prime clone stabilization at 79%_

Those percentages ticking by, ticking up. The higher the number, the closer you are to being free.

* * *

Beyond your tube, shadows move. There were other clones, before you. Failures, or you wouldn’t exist. They serve Father, unwavering, even if it means complete destabilization. 

Without warning, the Maddie program pulls the data feed.

It’s like being dunked in ice water, or at least how you’ve come to understand the information of being dunked in ice water. The sound-colors-motion of the feed is all you’ve ever known, canned voices and the pixelated faces of Dad’s enemies, Dad’s victims, Dad’s singular love; the full breadth and width of the original Daniel Fenton’s life chopped up into bite-sized statistics—without all that pressure in your skull, your world is dark and terribly quiet.

The wires and tubes threaded under your skin twitch, slip out of your skin all at once, and this is your first taste of pain. You gasp, but the sound is drowned out by the noise of suction cups popping off your skin and suit, and that sound is drowned out by the depressurized hiss of the stasis tube’s door opening for the very first time.

Dad keeps his lab at a brisk 50 degrees. After months of the same sharp smell of warm ectoplasm and your own sour exhale, the fresh air _burns_ in your nose and throat.

The first words you hear Dad say are: “Welcome to the world, young Daniel,” as he steps into your line of sight. He’s in his ghost form, tall and broad and just as menacing as the data feed promised, yet you feel no fear. He’s your father, your creator, your reason to exist. You see him, and you want to do anything— _everything_ —for him.

But then his face changes, twists into something ugly, something _disgusted_. He takes a step back, looks away from you to furiously yell, “ _Maddie!_ His eyes! What’s wrong with his eyes?”

“Superficial deformities are to be expected due to genetic splicing, teddy bear,” the Maddie program says brightly.

You try to form the words, to ask what’s wrong with your eyes, to ask what she means. You have no memory of genetic splicing. You’re a perfect copy of the original Daniel—aren’t you?

Dad relaxes, bares his fangs in a shuddering smile. “Ah, yes. Yes, of course! I had forgotten the probability of that. Release him.”

Your restraints pop open, and suddenly you’re using your legs for the very first time. In your head, you know how all this works, joints and weight and gravity and all that. But the doing—well, you fall right out of your tube not two seconds after your knees began wondering what the hell was going on.

But Dad catches you, Dad and his strong, strong arms embrace you, and it’s like coming home. “Easy, easy!” he chuckles. “Don’t worry, Daniel, I’ve got you.”

You understand how to talk, but the action eludes you; only air whistles through your throat when you try to say, _I love you._

* * *

Dad brings a mirror down to the lab when you ask for one, leans it up against a bare stretch of wall and floats out of the way so you might observe your whole self, the self beyond what your installed memories and your limited perception have provided.

“ _What?_ ” Your voice is still a feathery, clumsy sound. Consonants are hard. You hate consonants kind of a lot. “My eyes?”

You remember Dad saying something, when he pulled you out of the stasis tube. He said something was wrong with your eyes, but that had been—

Well. Time is a funny thing to you still. You _know_ it exists, you _know_ it passes, because Dad has to leave you alone, has to leave the Maddie program to babysit while you practice basic actions your brain is convinced you have down pat but you’ve never done once in your life. A week has passed since then? Maybe? You don’t know. You don’t bother to ask. 

But your eyes. You’d hoped whatever had been different—had been _wrong_ —with them had corrected itself by now.

But your ghost half’s eyes aren’t green. They’re red, _wholly_ red, just like Dad’s.

“I know,” he says, swooping in like the Discovery Channel screenshots of birds of prey you have emblazoned in your head. He grips your shoulders with fingers like talons, his huge white-and-red cloak slapping your ankles. “I know. It’s a shame, isn’t it? Nearly perfect, but for the eyes. Ah well, nothing we can’t fix later, isn’t that right, my boy?”

You look at his grinning reflection, something you don’t have a name for curling unpleasantly in your gut. “Right,” you say.

* * *

You’re cold all the time, and that doesn’t make any sense. The original Daniel has no issues with the cold, is comfortable in subzero temperatures as long as he’s in his ghost form. Even as a human, near-freezing is barely cause to bother with a jacket. So why do you shiver at a measly 50 degrees?

You wait until Dad’s long-since phased upstairs and the Maddie program has idled, and then you waited longer, just to be sure. Finally, you shuffle up to the rear of the central server rack, where fans blow hot air in a continuous stream, and hold out your hands. Heat soaks into your skin, spreads up your arms, and you breathe a happy sigh of relief you didn’t know you were holding. You knew what being warm was, but you’ve never experienced it before now, and it’s even better than you thought it would be.

But that wonderful sensation lasts only seconds, and then your gloves begin to blister before your eyes.

* * *

_prime clone stabilization at 63%_

* * *

Dad scolds you sharp enough to hurt nearly like a physical blow, though he doesn’t raise a hand against you. His claws dig into the rubbery skin of your burned arms, not unkindly, as he cleans and wraps the ugly green wounds


End file.
